APPENDIX 18
Memorandum submitted by Professor Geoffrey
Hosking, School of Slavonic and East European Studies
I am writing to you as a member of the Executive
Committee of the Britain-Russia Centre. I was surprised to discover,
at our Executive Committee meeting on 21 October, that the Foreign
& Commonwealth Office, having conducted a Quinquennial Review,
is about to end all funding for the membership, library and information
services of the Britain-Russia Centre, without awaiting the report
of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on British-Russian relations.
The Britain-Russia Centre (as the GB-USSR Association)
was set up some 40 years ago to mobilise public support for the
aims of the British government in relation to the Soviet Union.
Ever since then the members of the Centre, who are spread widely
in all regions of the UK, have been a fruitful source of support,
information and specialised knowledge for all concerned with Anglo-Soviet
and British-Russian relations. It has also assisted the FCO in
receiving and entertaining Soviet/Russian visitors.
I should like to be certain that the Britain-Russia
Centre has had a chance to testify before your Committee, since
it continues to play a major role in relations between the two
countries. It may be the case that its members, library and information
service have no further useful function from the FCO's point of
view, but surely that decision should not be taken without considering
what the Commons Committee has to say on the subject. The UK is,
after all, a parliamentary democracy. At the very least Dr Iain
Elliott, as its Director, should be asked to testify.
I should add that, as far as I have been able
to ascertain, the Quinquennial Review was conducted at great speed
and without much consultation with members of the Britain-Russia
Centre. Debra Fisher, who was responsible for it, contacted me
as a member of the executive and asked to speak to me, just before
I was due to go to Finland for a week. It transpired from our
conversation that by the time I returned it would already be too
late to hold the interview, and I therefore never met her. That
seems to me like undue haste.
25th October 1999
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